Chapter 9 #2
A new fear took root: that he had finally given up. That he had found another to fill the void I left—someone more willing, more responsive, and more beautiful.
So I went back to him.
No threats compelled me. No trick with seeds. I sought him out.
I returned to the Underworld of my own volition.
I arched over him, my pussy milking his cock hard as the past crashed through me, and I slammed back down to his hilt.
He growled, a primal, possessive sound. Yet he remained oblivious to the history of love and hate replaying in my mind.
“Fuck, Bloom,” he groaned. “So tight. So perfect. You’re taking me so well.”
I rode him harder, faster, my movements a blur. I was no longer the weak Bloom. Persephone’s strength surged through every dormant cell.
My rhythm turned maddening as I fucked him desperately.
Then I slowed down, rising until only the tip of his cock remained inside me before crashing down with brutal force.
He breathed hard, his eyes rolling back at the pleasure, at my control.
Over and over, I shifted the pace and fucked him however I wanted, giving him what he needed.
“Fuck me just like that, baby,” he panted. His newly healed hands gripped my hips despite the pain it must have caused him. “Use me. Take everything you need.”
I braced my hands on his chest, feeling his heart thunder beneath my palms. His skin was hot. Slick with sweat. Every muscle flexed as he drove into me.
I moved up and down his gorgeous length.
“You feel so fucking good,” he praised me. “Better than anything. Better than breathing. I need you more than I need my next heartbeat. Always.”
His words cut through me, sharp and sweet and unbearable.
I remembered him saying the same things to me before, in different bodies, across time. His devotion never changed.
My pace quickened, my need for him vast and consuming. He met every movement, his thrusts vehement. Pleasure built, stroke by relentless stroke. My pussy gloved him so tightly.
“Every day without you was agony,” he said. His voice broke on the words. “Every breath without you felt wrong.”
Tears pricked behind the curtain of my eyes even as pleasure coiled tighter in my core.
He shifted me, changing the angle, and hit the perfect spot inside me. He pounded into me with the strength of a god.
I cried out, moaning his name as the sensation overwhelmed me.
“You like that,” he growled, lust burning in his eyes as if I were the only thing that mattered. As if he would have no one else. “Your greedy cunt clenches around me so hard. You’re close, aren’t you?”
“Yes, so close. Don’t stop,” I gasped. “Fuck me harder.”
“Is this hard enough?” He drove into me with a series of rapid, brutal thrusts. “Is your cunt weeping happily? I’m ruining you for anyone else.”
“You already have,” I said, fucking him back, my breasts bouncing. “Over and over.”
With a growl, he lifted me and turned us so I was on my hands and knees on the rug, still joined. He settled behind me and buried himself deep within me.
The room smelled of heavy sex as our cum mixed, the wet sound he made by driving into me relentlessly obscene and erotic.
“Look the mess you made,” he hissed.
His hips moved frantically, his cock plunging into me, and I slammed my ass back into his groin to increase the friction. The pleasure was too much.
“Tell me, who owns this lovely, needy cunt?” he demanded.
I wigged my ass to taunt him. “You tell me. Better, show me.”
He thrust into me, so brutal and merciless and claiming. For a moment, I was afraid that I couldn’t take it.
“Who owns this cunt?” he demanded.
“You,” I whimpered. “It’s always you.”
“Say it in a full sentence.”
“My desperate cunt belongs to you, H…Nero.”
He passed for a second, then fucked me even harder, using my cunt for his insatiable male pleasure.
“Only I can fuck this cunt. Anyone touches you, and I’ll slaughter them.”
Sharp, unbearable pressure kept mounting in me. Building. Cresting. I wanted him to destroy me completely.
“Shatter for me,” he ordered. “Come on my cock like a good girl.”
I could no longer fight back. His words were the law.
I threw my head back as my orgasm broke over me. My cry echoed through the penthouse, raw and primal.
My pussy milked his cock. Clenching. Taking everything he had to give.
“I’ll fuck this hot cunt to eternity,” Nero promised. His own release followed instantly, his hands gripping my hips with bruising force as he pinned me to him, riding out my climax.
His cock grew larger, plunging deeper. His hot seed spilled into me, claiming me.
I trembled, breathless and spent. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. I felt his heartbeat pounding against my back.
His lips traced my neck in the afterglow. “Have I told you you’ll be my undoing?” he murmured.
“Always, lover boy,” I purred back.
When our breathing steadied, he brought me to the vast bed. It was similar to our marriage bed from the glass palace of the Underworld. The sheets were black silk, cool against my heated skin. The posts were carved with roses and skulls and pomegranates.
An ache rose in my chest, but I didn’t let it show on my face as I smiled at Nero, who now lay on his side, his heavy arm draped over my waist, his gaze never leaving me.
I studied his profile in the dim firelight.
His every gesture and effort now unfolded with painful clarity.
Reaper Academy, built for me as a sanctuary.
Every gothic detail was his desperate reconstruction of the world we had shared.
All of it, an attempt to restore my memory, to make sure I survived this time, and to break the curse of our endless cycle.
He had always known the unshakable truth I had forgotten: I had loved him.
His dark realm held no sunlight, no blue sky. But I had stopped craving the sun when all I wanted was him, when I learned the darkness was not an absence but his presence.
I missed the blood moon hanging in the endless twilight above our gothic palace.
The blue-golden ocean crashing against the purple sand shores, its waves singing songs of the dead.
The desert glowing like embers at midnight, beautiful and terrible at once.
A stunning, stark landscape no other realm could match—not even the city of the gods with all its golden, hollow perfection.
A sudden, deep ache to go home seized me. I inched closer to Nero in the firelight, watching him, unable to look away.
He slept now, his breathing deep and even despite the pain he must still feel. Bandages wrapped his back, already spotted with seeping blood.
He was beautiful in a harsh, powerful way, all sharp angles and hard muscle, with broad shoulders made to carry kingdoms. His hands, strong enough to kill or create with equal skill.
Even in sleep, his face was devastatingly handsome, a strong jaw shadowed with stubble, high cheekbones, lips that could be cruel or tender.
He was as gorgeous as when I had first seen him in that garden an eon ago. But the hint of boyish light beneath the brooding exterior was gone. Time and loss had stripped it away, leaving only scars and hardness and ice. Every soft edge had been sharpened by millennia of grief.
He hid his profound brokenness under layers of rage and shadow, but I could see it. I had always seen it, even when I was too young to understand.
I was coming back to him. Aware of it now, in this lifetime. Aware of who I was and who we had been.
What kind of man had he become in all these ages? They called him brutal. A savage monster wearing a dark angel’s face. But they did not know him as I did. They had never seen him tender, full of passion.
Did I still know him as I believed I did? For millennia, we had never truly been together—only stolen moments before death claimed me and reset everything.
I swallowed hard, letting the memories settle—
The Underworld, the place I had finally called home after ages of fighting him, denying him, burning his palace and breaking his heart.
He’d wronged me, and I’d wronged him in return. And now here we were.
I brushed his damp hair back from his forehead. His eyelashes fluttered but did not open.
What did the God of Death dream about?
“I’m not a good man. Never was,” he murmured suddenly, still asleep. His voice was rough, full of pain. “But I can’t let you go. Even though I doomed you. Even though you died because of me. You’re all I want, my light, my love, my forever...”
My heart cracked open.
I was his queen.
I was Persephone.
The absolute truth settled into my bones, in my soul.
My mate did not know I finally remembered, and he couldn’t know.
I would keep him in the dark about my awakening. Keep all of them—Stardust, Sebastian, the gods, and whoever else watched and waited—in the dark while I gathered my strength, my awakening power.
While I planned my endgame.